"We're doomed"

Media doom-mongering takes two forms: 1) overblown reports
of "spiralling" threats and dangers (see our Fear
Hype section for examples); 2) the implication
that society can't "afford" (in monetary terms)
to solve these problems (and that there's less and less money
available for providing even basic public services).

The result is a sort of infantilising of a panicked
public. The situation is "hopeless", we're told,
but we'd better get behind our leaders, otherwise things could
be even worse. Mass ennui/apathy seems to result from the
combination of anxiety and helplessness projected by the media.

Would apathy continue if people knew that solutions to global
problems existed  at a total cost of less than a third
of the world's annual military expenditure? That such affordable
solutions are available was the finding of a 1990s multidisciplinary
global research project headed by Medard Gabel of the World
Game Institute (WGI)  which we document in our What
the world wants section.

The WGI research utilised the world's most comprehensive
and up-to-date databases on global problems, and carefully
quantified the costs/benefits of solutions favoured by experts
in the relevant fields. The unique thing about this research
was that by considering all global problems/solutions together
as a whole, it became apparent that benefits from applying
solutions in one area had knock-on benefits in other areas
(vastly reducing overall costs of solutions).

The chart below uses WGI data to show the cost of solving
various global problems  as a proportion of total global
military expenditure. The combined total cost for solving
these major problems comes to 30% of annual military expenditures.

= $1 billion

= Amount
needed to eradicate smallpox from the world
(accomplished 1978): $300 million.

Total Chart represents annual world military
expenditures (around $780 billion
in the mid-1990s when the WGI research was carried out, compared
to $234.5 billion for solving all the global problems listed
below*)

*Sources:The What the World Wants Project
is by Medard Gabel and the research staff of the World Game
Institute. The material in this section of Media Hell is quoted
directly from that research. Credits, Major References & Footnotes >